The Spymaster's Daughter (29 page)

“Phelippes does excellent work, Majesty, but not this time….” Walsingham's face reddened, and he seemed reluctant to expose his daughter's shame.

Frances curtsied, having no such shame or hesitation. There was no retreat possible. “I deciphered the message, Your Majesty,” Frances said in a voice she carefully controlled lest it quaver.

Dee looked up and chuckled, holding his finger on a planet's arc. “Majesty, I knew this lady would make an intelligencer when she first came to me begging to learn the secrets of the grille.”

Walsingham looked more astonished.

The queen was guarded. “A secret intelligencer amongst my ladies?” She seemed to savor the words, then turned to Dee. “First my philosopher signs himself ‘Zero Zero Seven' and now you, Lady Sidney. Should I name you Intelligencer Zero Zero Eight?”

She slapped one hand against the table, whether in disgust or delight Frances could not tell, because she dared not look into the queen's face. She glanced at her father, but he was expressionless, as he could easily be, giving away little of what he was thinking, yet she could guess well enough.

Frances felt her heart would leap from her breast. She could already smell the rank Thames as it flowed in ebb past her rose garden at Barn Elms.

“Walsingham, do I never know what is happening in the shadows of my own court?”

Her Majesty's expression was most strange. Her eyes were narrowed, but her mouth was in better spirits, leaving Frances unsure whether the queen was jesting or ready to explode in one of her famous palace-stunning tirades.

“And, Lady Frances, you again, I vow. First, you challenge Lord Essex and now your father, who looks to be very angry with you. For so slender a figure, you do choose most worthy opponents.”

Having sat at cards with the queen, Frances was not unaware that there was one trump card to play in this game. If rightly played,
it might not save her, but it would lessen the punishment she would suffer. She quietly thanked the Lord that the queen's father, Henry VIII, had closed all the nunneries where disobedient daughters had once ended their lives. She drew herself even more erect. “Majesty, my worthy lord father does not believe women have the mind for intelligencer work. I sought to show him that we do.”

Her father was quick to explain himself. “It is well-known, Majesty. Women have flighty minds and cannot sustain mental work for long periods.”

“Oh, such is well-known, Sir Walsingham.” The “sir” had teeth in it, though all the queen's words were precisely measured, as they often were in the presence chamber…the tone of absolute command.

Walsingham shifted his feet as the queen's eyebrows rose and her black-flecked, dark blue gaze settled on him.

Dee hid his face behind the star chart, but that did not save him.

“What say you, Doctor?”

“Majesty, I have been so privileged in my life to learn that a woman's mind is capable of almost anything.”

“Almost, Dr. Dee?”

“Beg pardon, your grace…any work of the mind, if she has even one small part of your abilities.” He struggled to lift his bulk to his feet and bowed.

Elizabeth nodded, somewhat mollified, then looked up at her spymaster. “Mr. Secretary Walsingham, you place great demands on your queen's purse for your intelligencers, always wanting more.”

Knowing her father also spent great sums of his own money for the queen's work, Frances felt sorrow to have brought Elizabeth's indignation down upon him. “Majesty, if I may…”

“You may not,” the queen said.

From high hope, Frances's heart slipped down to utter despair.

The queen was not finished. “And now, Mr. Secretary, I see you
do not accept the skills of a lady who is already rewarded from my own treasury and would cost me not a penny more. What is more, Sir Walsingham, I do not place great demands on her time, but I pay her very well.” Elizabeth, drumming her fingers, appeared to wait for Walsingham's submission. It was not forthcoming, and red began to creep up her royal neck.

Frances noted that at this very late hour, the Mask of Youth had cracked and begun to fall away to expose some mask-defying wrinkles, but she kept any sympathy from her face. Elizabeth read expressions as easily as she read Latin and Greek.

“Come now, my good sir Moor, I must to my bed before sunrise. What say you to a new intelligencer who costs me not even one more groat?”

Walsingham bowed low. “As you wish, Your Majesty. As you always wish.”

“Good. That was decided faster than any action by my Privy Council.”

Frances curtsied three times, backing to the door, which was now being opened by liveried guards behind her. She dared not look up, lest whatever her face revealed change her sovereign's mind. Unless her intelligencer instincts had deserted her, there had been an undertone in the queen's words. She did not usually take a lady's disobedience so lightly. A father, after all, was a king in his family; any disobedience, any disruption in the Great Chain of Being, was a threat to her realm. Could it mean that the queen, so often brought costly bad news by her spymaster, relished the chance to score a point and win the game? Frances felt a twinge of conscience, which she successfully managed to overcome by the time she reached her father's office. Did she have an ally in Queen Elizabeth? Perhaps. Perhaps not. She suspected that the queen's amusement might not last through another adventure. In future, she resolved to take greater care.

G
REENWICH
P
ALACE

S
ometimes, or truthfully many times, Frances admitted to herself that she achieved what she wanted only to find it wanting. It had happened with her marriage; it was happening again. She sat behind a writing table in her father's offices like every other intelligencer, though in a corner out of his sight. But now almost every reason for wishing to be there was gone.

Had she won a battle only to lose everything she treasured? Had she lost her father's love? Had she lost Robert? She closed her eyes to thrust away such painful thoughts, but they crept back upon her nonetheless.

Had she ever been loved? Oh, aye, she'd been needed by her father and by Philip, but her father wanted her to be a replica of her mother—soft, yielding, pale Anne Barnes—and Philip had given his heart to Stella.

No, Frances Walsingham had never been loved for herself, not in the way she dreamed of being loved, and she felt great regret, for in gaining her desire to be an intelligencer she had harmed others.

Her father, in a temper when they had returned from the royal apartments and the queen's startling decision, had not forgotten to deal with Phelippes. Now the man who hoped to be awarded estates and honors for his work was so cowed, he scarce looked her way, and gave her only deciphers that swallowed her time while producing nothing of real importance.

And Robert was gone, where she did not know. She longed to talk with him, to explain herself if she could, and to ask his pardon for the trouble she seemed always to bring him. As a lady of the presence chamber, she thought of witty things to recount about the court and the queen, but the time for telling them passed, and she quaked to meet him suddenly without preparation. She could not tell him the truth, since she resisted knowing it herself, no matter how many times that truth waylaid her. She could not say that she missed him, wanted to hear his voice. And she could never tell him that she felt happier when he was near, when she could look up and see his head bent to his own work, his hair falling forward so that she wondered what was hidden in his eyes.

He'd been sent on some mission by her father, which no one would speak of—she knew neither for how long nor the nature of his errand. He could be in France, even in London, though that sweltering city was to be avoided in high July, since the three great and deadly scourges of hot weather, plague, and the sweat summered there.

Robert could be anywhere. Perhaps she would never see him again, and if she did, he might avoid her like trouble, or hate her for the many problems she'd caused him. Why wouldn't he be angry? If he pleased her, he displeased her father…caught in the middle as no man would want to be. If he had ever felt tender thoughts of friendship, they must be extinguished by now.

Restless and heartsick, she twisted a quill in her hands until it broke. She put the pieces aside with several other broken quills.

Frances had not been able to see Robert alone before he left. She had wanted to, rising those first days as he walked by her writing table, knowing not what to say to him but wanting some exchange with him and hoping her words would be welcome. He had acknowledged her by inclining his head with a small smile as he would any lady, but he did not speak or pause to allow any words from her.

Her Majesty and the entire court had left Hampton Court for Greenwich, and soon after, with a huge train of wagons and coaches, she was off for her summer progress to show herself to her people.

Frances had not been invited to accompany the queen, but told to keep to her ciphers, thus saving Elizabeth the feeding and care of one lady of the presence. The queen also relieved her purse of the cost of feeding her entire entourage by visiting her country lords and gentlemen, those who had not fled from the thousand courtiers and servants that trailed Her Majesty. The queen's great favor had been known to bankrupt entire families.

Frances knew that some, on hearing that they had been chosen for a royal visitation, locked their doors and left their estates behind them until word reached them that the royal train had moved on to another lord.

Disappointing the monarch would not come without cost. The absent lord would need to ensure that his Twelfth Night gifts for the queen were very grand, indeed. Elizabeth always won. At the thought, Frances covered an admiring smile and felt somewhat less dejected.

She smoothed her new blue satin gown with its lace ruff and cuffs and a silver-embroidered brocade kirtle and partlet. She loved the lush color after the endless white gowns Elizabeth demanded of her ladies of the presence.

Phelippes approached. “A message for you came this very morning from Holland.”

“Thank you, Master Phelippes. Is that where Robert has been sent?”

“I cannot say, my lady, or risk Mr. Secretary's great anger.” He returned to his table.

Frances drew the message across the table. The letter was sealed with Philip's signet. It was a grille of only a few lines, though he said nothing of her grille to him. And so short, unlike Philip, who often had instructions for her about the care of his estates that required two close-written pages. What few words had needed to be ciphered?

Her hand trembled as she put the letter aside.
If I return…
Was it a forewarning or a soldier's natural caution? Or was she being a foolish and remorseful woman? The words Philip had written would once have thrilled her, but this day they left her full of guilt.

She longed for clarity, yet nothing was clear. As though seen in an unpolished steel mirror, Philip's image was blurred to her. He had been gone for near a year, and now even his miniature brought him no closer. When she tried to recall her early love for him, nothing moved in her heart. Too much hurt had come between them, too much betrayal. She bit her lip in remorse.

Perhaps her father had been right long ago when he had remonstrated with his child: “Frances, you always want what you cannot have. Why can you not be satisfied with what God has given you, what He has made of you?”

Because then I would be nothing.

The outer door opened with a burst of talk, and her father and Robert strode in, bringing with them the scent of clean channel wind from the river Thames.